NOTE: This should go without saying, but it doesn't, so: this is not intended to disparage anyone's spiritual practice. My own is so eccentric that I am hardly in any position to denigrate anyone else's! This is about the wanky squabble amongst certain Heathens who took it upon themselves to offer unsolicited advice to other Heathens about the One True Way [TM] to worship the Norse god Loki.

So on September 4th, a Lokean - a Pagan who reveres the Norse god Loki, not a Tom Hiddleston groupie - called w00lopt posted a photo of a dessert to zir tumblr with the caption:

Afternoon offering to Loki. Sponge cake, fresh strawberries and whipped cream.

necroticdoom, who has unsurprisingly deleted or renamed zir tumblr since this, replied:

um……what? Strawberry shortcake as an offering? to Loki??? WHAT? needless to say that is absolutely ridiculous in a myriad of ways. *bangs head*

Response was swift.
( Read more... )

The CBC reports a story about a 66-year-old missionary, Eloise Bergen, and her husband who was assaulted in Kenya earlier this year, and recently testified against her assaulters. People feel the need to state their opinions in the comments: ( Read more... )

This story has been widely reported by Canadian media, so there are even more choice comments, including an opinion piece and replies on the Globe and Mail site. There are also articles from when the assault occurred, including a longer comment thread at the original CBC article.

ETA: Sorry, was a mispost (the comments I originally found were wanky rather than plain depressing, and I forgot to change the field). The recipes sound delicious, though.

School Boots Boy Over Jesus Costume



( Principal says costume was offensive and disrupted education process )

( Mum thinks her son's freedom of expression was violated )

( And now the commenters have a wing at it! Osama bin laden, Mohammed, murderers, ghosts, and prostitutes included! )

Needless to say Jesus was resurrected later on Halloween night to go trick or treating. Whoot!

Who's in the mood for a good ol' academic tussle?

1. Professor Steve Fuller writes a book called Dissent over Descent: Intelligent Design's Challenge to Darwinism.

2. Professor AC Grayling reviews the book for New Humanist magazine.

It is sometimes hard to know whether books that strike one as silly and irresponsible...are the product of a desire to strike a pose and appear outrageous (the John Gray syndrome), or really do represent that cancer of the contemporary intellect, post-modernism.

3. Fuller responds to the review.

I wish I could repay AC Grayling’s compliment by naming an exotic mental pathology after him, but regrettably his review of Dissent over Descent displays disorders of a much more mundane kind: he has merely failed to read the book properly and does not know what he is talking about.

4. Grayling responds to the response.

Steve Fuller complains, as do all authors whose books are panned, that I did not read his book properly (or at all). Alas, I did.

5. Forum fight!

February 10th was International IRL Scientology Raid Day!

The results:
List of pictures and videos of international raids
Definitive headcount per city of February 10th
Epic worldwide news coverage

In total, an estimated 6500 Anonymous marched worldwide to stop Scientology.


( And of course, there's wank. )

Meanwhile, anti-Scientology celebrities continue to support Anonymous! Paulette Cooper issued a statement that:

“Anonymous has become Unanimous – one voice at last unafraid to tell the truth about the many evils of the Scientology cult. On February 10th, in one day, one person, Anonymous, accomplished more than I did in 15 years by getting over 7000 people in almost 100 world-wide cities to come out publicly and bravely oppose Scientology.” — Paulette Cooper

But that's not all: Karin Spaink (of XS4all fame) actually showed up for the Amsterdam raid! (Then again, so did Splongcat.)


The next raid is March 15th - unite as one, divide by zero, beware the ides of March, bring a party hat!


ETA - This was yesterday's front page of a national free Dutch newspaper. No, srsly. Comes with translation!

ETA #2 - Epic flash video is epic too.

So Tatsuya, creator of the webcomic Sinfest, often pokes fun at religion in general. Recently he made a rather controversial comic (yes, I know it involves a transformer. Stop laughing at me).

The wank on the forum begins when death_to_dib describes a conversation with a friend whose boyfriend is off on a mission.

I've never heard of a mission group going somewhere and not bringing some sort of material good into the place, but taking that aside: When you go to a third world country where people are dying of hunger and sickness, a person can feed an idividual. [...] But when all that fails, your female friend and her boyfriend are correct: the gospel is the most important thing you can give someone. They are not in hell, not even close. Their suffering will inrcease beyond imagination if they do not choose to cast their cares upon Christ. That of course is not the reason for salvation, the gospel isn't about where you go when you die but rather what you do while you're alive, but still. Dont knock what you don't understand, and you can't truly understand the christian faith unless you have it. I know I didn't.

And the wank goes on and on about religion for about 50 pages, while many wonder as to why a 'fundie' is on the forums of Sinfest. Evolution is argued against, macros are used, people use bad arguements on both sides, and it all ends in puppies.